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Who Was The Greatest -- Bradman or Sobers?

I was born in Guyana, the country which produced Clive Lloyd,
Rohan Kanhai, Lance Gibbs, Basil Butcher, Joe Solomon, Roy
Fredericks and others. Cricket is the lifeblood of the Caribbean,
and its greatest adhesive force. C.L.R. James, a renowned cricket
scholar, in his work "Cricket in West Indian Culture," at, p 119
aptly noted, "From its beginning to this day cricket in the West
Indies has expressed with astonishing fidelity the social relations
of the islands."

In his seminal work, "Beyond a Boundary," James puts cricket in
perspective when he wrote,"Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic
spectacle. It belongs with the theatre, ballet, opera and the
dance."

As kids, we were inspired to become famous and reach the pinnacle
of cricketing fame like Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Learie
Constantine, George Headley, Sir Frank Worrell, Rohan Kanhai and
other West Indian icons so revered around the cricketing world.

They are the very embodiment of the West Indian dream, and the
fruit of its labour. One of the great lessons we learnt as aspiring
cricketers was to walk when you knew you were out without waiting
for the umpire's signal and to acknowledge a good performance from
the opposing side. In fact, sportsmanship was as intrinsic a part
of a cricketer's development as his ability to play the ball off
the legs or to hook a bouncer off the eyebrows.

The latter was a necessity in those days because our paraphernalia
consisted only of a sculptured coconut tree branch for a bat and a
cork ball for a ball, much in the traditions of the great West
Indian players listed above. As Samuel Selvon chronicles in his
book, "The Cricket Match," Ways of Sunlight, p. 162, a dry mango
seed often substituted for a ball, and a pitchoil tin for a wicket.

Yet, what cricket meant for us as kids is best summarized by Nobel
Laureate Sir V. S. Naipaul, in The Middle Passage, p. 44, "Cricket
has always been more than a game in Trinidad. In a society which
demanded no skills and offered no rewards to merit, cricket was the
only activity which permitted a man to grow to his full stature and
to be measured against international standards...The cricketer was
our only hero-figure."

I would be remiss if I did not write to lend support to the
vigorous view many writers have espoused that Sir Garfield Sobers
was the greatest cricketer of the twentieth century. This question
as to who is the greatest cricketer has spurred great debate when
Wisden's panel of experts chose Sir Don Bradman over Sir Gary
Sobers as the cricketer of the century just gone by. I wish to go
one step further and say that Sobers was the greatest cricketer of
this and any other century, and by parity of reasoning, that he was
the greatest cricketer that has ever lived, or the greatest the
world has ever seen.

The son of a merchant seaman from the small island of Barbados, his
genius left an indelible memory wherever cricket is played, and his
rise from poverty to greatness will be an inspiration for many to
follow. He was a one-man cricket team, the dream of any captain.
The completeness of his versatile skills and talents bestrode the
cricketing world like a colossus, and like the proverbial Napoleon
on the battlefields of cricket, he conquered all before him,
excelling in every conceivable department of the game. Oh, if only
Sir Gary was available to proudly don his West Indian
flannels...West Indian pride will soar once again.

Uniquely gifted, he was blessed with supreme athleticism, panther
reflexes, eagle eyesight and the heart of a lion. He was a peerless
exemplar of cricketing brilliance, endowed with an alliance of such
natural gifts of talent and genius, that we may never see his like
again. He was the cricketer's cricketer, whose phenomenal genius
hardly brooked human limits. It was legendary, both in quality and
quantity. Sobers has set the standards by which other cricketers
are measured.

Like Muhammad Ali in boxing, Michael Jordan in basketball and Pele
in soccer, Sobers is similarly unrivalled in the world of cricket.
Sir Neville Cardus, that doyen of cricket scribes, gave the
appropriate imprimatur to his all round genius in Wisden, 1967, p.
38, when he wrote: "Garfield St. Aubyn Sobers...the most renowned
name of any cricketer since Bradman's high noon. He is, in fact,
even more famous than Bradman ever was; for he was accomplished in
every department of the game, and has exhibited his genius in all
climes and conditions... We can safely agree that no player has
proven versatility of skill as convincingly as Sobers has done,
effortlessly, and after the manner born."

In fact, Sobers is to cricket what Shakespeare is to literature,
Michelangelo to art and Mozart to music. His only perceivable
Achilles heel was as a captain, a consideration which can be
excluded in the present context of argument. Sir Donald Bradman,
who saw his 254 against Australia for a World XI in Melbourne in
1971-72, reckoned that it was the best innings he had ever seen on
Australian soil. Sir Clyde Walcott said, "Sir Gary is remembered
not only for his remarkable trail of statistical records, but for
the quality of his cricket and the way he enjoyed the game."

E.W. Swanton reminded us that "the true measure of his influence
must take account of his sportsmanship and an unselfishness that
were never questioned, an example second to none." John Arlott
described Sobers as "the finest all-round player in the history of
cricket." C.L.R. James, in his work aforestated, reiterated that,
"A man of genius is what he is, he cannot be something else and
remain a man of genius." Michael Manley once said this of Sobers,
"Sobers was destined, in typically Caribbean fashion, to shine like
some great star alone in the firmament of his own genius."

Let Sobers have the last word. In his book, The Changing Face of
Cricket, he commends C.L.R. James' words to all readers everywhere,
as if answering those who chose him second best," What do they know
of cricket, who only cricket know?"